Rescuers dig for victims of Nigerian car bombs

Published: Wednesday, May 21, 2014 9:54 a.m. CST

Caption

(AP)

Smoke rises after a bomb blast at a bus terminal in Jos, Nigeria, Tuesday, May 20, 2014. Two explosions ripped through a bustling bus terminal and market frequented by thousands of people in Nigeria's central city of Jos on Tuesday afternoon, and police said there are an unknown number of casualties. The blasts could be heard miles away and clouds of black smoke rose above the city as firefighters and rescue workers struggled to reach the area as thousands of people fled. (AP Photo/Stefanos Foundation)

Caption

(Sunday Alamba)

In this photo taken Sunday, May 18, 2014, Joy Bishara, one of the school girls that escaped being kidnapped by Islamist extremists by jumping off a truck, is photographed outside her home, in Chibok, Nigeria. More than 200 schoolgirls were kidnapped from a school in Chibok in Nigeria's north-eastern state of Borno on April 14. Boko Haram claimed responsibility for the act. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)

JOS, Nigeria – Rescue workers armed with body bags on Wednesday dug into the rubble of buildings destroyed by two car bombs in a central Nigerian city as people searched for loved ones missing in the market attack that killed at least 118.

Related Links

Most victims are women and children vendors, said Mohammed Abdulsalam of the National Emergency Management Agency.

"We expect to find more bodies in the rubble," Abdulsalam said.

"Allahu akhbar!" some young Muslim men yelled provocatively at an AP photographer near the scene, using the war cry of Islamic militants that means "God is great" within hearing of soldiers at a checkpoint.

Jos is tense with fears the attack blamed on Islamic extremists could inflame religious rivalry. The city in central Nigeria sits on a volatile fault line dividing Nigeria's mainly Muslim north from the predominantly Christian south and has been a flashpoint in the past for deadly conflict between adherents of the two religions. Boko Haram, the group suspected in the attack, wants to impose an Islamic state under strict Shariah law in Nigeria, though half the country's 170 million people are Christians.

Officials in at least three other central and central-north states have suggested the extremists are feeding into local tribal and religious tensions to spread the insurgency from its stronghold in the northeast into an area where thousands have been killed in recent years in disputes over land, water, religion and tribe.

At the Jos marketplace, earthmovers demolished buildings weakened by the blasts and resultant fires and moved heavy debris, allowing rescuers to search for more bodies.

Gloria Paul was among a handful of people searching for loved ones at Bingham University Teaching Hospital. She was looking for her husband but all she had found was his car parked near Terminus Market, its windows all shattered. Dozens of wailing people crowded outside the morgue at the Jos University Teaching Hospital next to the bomb site, waited their turn to see if family members were among the dead.

Security forces cordoned off the area of mounds of rubble, burned-out vehicles and razed buildings with the debris of panic scattered around — a sandal here, a hat there. Exploded mangoes and pineapples rotted in the sun, their sickly sweet smell mixing with the stench of rotting human flesh.

A charred engine block was all that remained of the grain-filled truck that held the second bomb.

Police anti-bomb squad officers investigated a crater left by one of the blasts.

The search for survivors was halted Tuesday night by fires ignited in buildings by the massive blasts that were heard miles (kilometers) away. Firefighters fought through the night to douse the blazes that collapsed buildings, Abdulsalam of the national emergency agency told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

At least 118 bodies were delivered to hospital morgues Tuesday, and 64 people were hospitalized, he said.

President Goodluck Jonathan indicated that he blames Boko Haram for Tuesday's attack, assuring Nigerians their government "remains fully committed to winning the war against terror."

No group has claimed responsibility.

Boko Haram's 5-year-old uprising has grabbed international attention with the abduction of nearly 300 schoolgirls who the extremists are threatening to sell into slavery.

On Monday a car bomb at a bus station killed 24 people in the Christian quarter of the northern Muslim city of Kano, where police later defused another massive car bomb. Two separate bomb blasts in April around another bus station, in the nation's capital of Abuja, killed more than 120 people and wounded more than 200.

The attacks on Monday and Tuesday took place after regional and Western leaders pledged "total war" on the militant group at a weekend summit in Paris.

The U.S. Embassy in Abuja condemned Tuesday's attack and said the United States is helping Nigeria to "grapple with violent extremism."

It also urged calm in Jos. "We have seen reports that tensions are high in Jos, and we join the voices of those who are appealing for calm."

The insurgency has become ever-deadlier, with more than 2,000 people killed this year compared to an estimated 3,600 between 2010 and 2013.